9 ways to prepare your website for Black Friday and Cyber Monday

Black Friday, followed by the lesser known Cyber Monday is the ideal time to promote your webshop with some great deals. But, are you sure that your website is ready for these potential surges in traffic? We have prepared a short checklist to ensure your webshop is optimised for the upcoming Black Friday and Cyber Monday madness.

When is Black Friday in 2022?

Black Friday is celebrated on the first Friday after Thanksgiving. In 2022, this is on November 25th. Cyber Monday is the Monday following Black Friday. This year, Cyber Monday falls on November 28th. Traditionally, this is the time of year when people all over the world are searching for the best deals. If you are looking to boost your sales and end Q4 with a bang, you are probably working on your Black Friday promotion strategy as we speak. Here's what you should do to ensure that your webshop can handle the surge in traffic.

1: Give your web hosting provider a heads-up

Make sure that your web host is aware of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, so that there is no planned maintenance scheduled on these crucial days, and support is available 24/7. Don’t know who your hosting provider is? We wrote a blog post about that.

2: Check your security certificates

Double-check that your TLS/SSL security certificates are not going to expire this week. If so, renew them in time, even when using automatic scripts/services like Let's Encrypt. When your HTTPS certificate is expired, your website won't load for your visitors. They will get security errors, harming your trust level. Don't know how to check your HTTPS certificate? We have a free tool for that.

3: Make a backup

Ensure you have a full backup of your webshop, stored offline. Having a backup in place allows you to get back online quickly. It can prevent a huge loss of income. Also, be sure to test the backup to ensure you can fully restore it in case of disaster.

4: Improve your SEO

It's never too late to check your SEO results. Multiple tools are available to verify and validate your website against SEO recommendations. Having them improved by Black Friday can be tricky, but will be worth the effort. Small changes can make a big difference in the long run.

5: Track your results

Be sure that your tracking tools work and are optimised, if applicable. This way you can analyse the results and optimise for next year.

6: Track your load speed

Keep an eye on how fast your webshop loads during the deals. A slow website means potential customers drop off and go to alternative webshops. Make sure to have numbers, so you can improve next year if needed.

7: Make sure your servers are up to their task

Also, avoid hitting any limits from your servers, such as disk space, load or a maximum amount of requests. Monitor your servers (or have someone do it for you) and add additional resources on time to avoid any server restarts during the spike moments.

8: Get notified if your site is in trouble

If your website is down, you want to know before anyone else. A few minutes of downtime on Black Friday could mean a huge loss of possible income. Make sure that you are notified of issues, before your customers! Not sure how? Check out Semonto, our monitoring tool. It warns you immediately when your website or webshop is down. Get a free trial (no credit card needed) and start monitoring today, to get your Black Friday and Cyber Monday covered.

9: Check your links

Nothing is more annoying than clicking a link that doesn't work. And on Black Friday, it could cost you a lot of money. Make sure that all the links on your website are working. And no, you don't need to check all of them manually. Our free broken link checker does all the hard work for you.

Good luck during Black Friday and Cyber Monday!